Today, Vivo launched their first proper, big boy foldable in India, the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro. It’s the first foldable in India to pack the current generation of smartphone hardware. As far as the big picture goes, Vivo’s the fourth brand to challenge Samsung for phones with bendy displays. Packed to the gills with the best Vivo has to offer, the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro has a lot of ‘firsts’ to boast about. It’s got that latest and greatest Qualcomm processor that’s become the minimum qualification to be a ‘real’ flagship these days, a solid 5,700mAh battery, 100W fast charging, ZEISS cameras and two gorgeous displays, both of which are fitted with in-display fingerprint scanners. That last thing is truly one-of-its-kind.
Vivo X Fold 3 Pro
Rs 1,59,999
What Is Good?
- Fantastic displays with in-display fingerprint sensors
- Long battery life and fast charging
- Great cameras
- Clean, sophisticated design
- Sleek and light design
What Is Bad?
- Exorbitantly expensive
- Software needs polish
It looks the part, too, with the least amount of random text printed on its body – now that’s an achievement for a Vivo smartphone. So, can it take the top spot in the list of things people show off at high-end diners? More importantly, how does that nearly Rs 1.6 lakh price tag work out? Find out in my review.
Vivo X Fold 3 Pro Review: Design and build
The Vivo X Fold 3 Pro is a handsome smartphone. We received the Celestial Black variant, which is devoid of any gaudy text whatsoever. Yes, there’s a bit of ZEISS branding, but we photography nerds love seeing that anywhere. It rocks a similar back panel texture to the X100 Pro with a touch less shine and shimmer.
| Dimensions | Folded: 15.996cm ×7.255cm ×1.120cm
Unfolded: 15.996cm ×14.240cm ×0.520cm Folded Thickness in mm – 11.2mm Un-Folded Thickness in mm – 5.2mm |
| Weight | 236g |
| Colour | Celestial Black |
| Front, Back & Middle Frame Material | Front Glass
Back : Glass Fiber Middle : Aluminum alloy |
Vivo has also worked hard to make this smartphone durable. This isn’t the first foldable from Vivo; technically, they launched previous iterations of Folds in the global and Chinese markets. But they worked hard to get the hinge mechanism right, so not only does it slam shut in a satisfying manner, but it also stays put in a semi-open state as and when required.
It’s also supposedly robust, having secured a TUV Rheinland certification for 500,000 reliable folds and unfolds. For what it’s worth, the OnePlus Open had a million, but hey, 100 reliable folds per day for 12 years doesn’t sound too bad for marketing either.
In the real world, I haven’t encountered any creaking sounds that made me grimace. I have used it to click photos of a recent dust storm in Delhi, so it has seen a fair bit of abuse from its arch-nemesis. I have also taken it for a dip in the swimming pool. I like that Vivo has cleverly disguised the screen protector on the foldable display without making it visible to your eyes. This prevents it from bubbling up on the sides and our cavemen-like instincts from peeling it off.
Holding it for long durations doesn’t feel like a death sentence, either. It’s light and surprisingly slim, both when it’s folded and open. But the camera module makes it heavy on one side, and it likes to stay up when the phone is in its semi-folded state. This means the display is the point of contact between the phone and the surface it’s lying on. So, make sure you’ve got a screen protector on.
The buttons are clicky and easy to reach. They have also tossed in a status slider near the volume rocker. I haven’t seen that on a Vivo before. Simply put, it feels premium in the hand, and its large, circular camera grabs attention from everywhere. And because it’s still relatively unknown, be prepared to correct everybody who asks, “Yeh OnePlus wala hai kya?”
One thing that I’d like to see is an official kickstand made specifically for the X Fold 3 Pro because I often use it as a laptop replacement by connecting a wireless Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
Vivo X Fold 3 Pro Review: Display and speakers
My biggest gripe with most folds is the awkward aspect ratio of both their displays. OnePlus tried to make things right with a natural-looking 20:9 ratio, which is very close to the 18:9 displays we are now used to. The X Fold 3 Pro is slightly taller and narrower, but it doesn’t stray too far away from the usual smartphone experience. It’s a neck-and-neck battle where the resolution and refresh rate are similar. But, what works in Vivo’s favour is a better-claimed brightness of 4,500 nits – both in and out.
| Screen | Main Screen – 8.03-inches
Cover Screen – 6.53-inches |
| Refresh Rate | 120Hz (Cover and Main) |
| Resolution | Main Screen – 2480 × 2200 (2K+)
Cover Screen – 2748 × 1172 |
| Type | Type AMOLED (Both Displays) |
| Brightness (claimed) | 4,500 nits (Main and Cover) |
| Brightness (tested) | 1049 nits (peak brightness on main and cover) |
Of course, the inner and outer displays are both AMOLED, so they deliver fantastic colours, but that extra headroom of brightness makes it a joy to use outdoors. And somehow, using the phone in high brightness for long durations doesn’t make it spit fire, even in hot Delhi summers.
What about the crease? Well, it’s there, and the grown-up thing to do is accept it. But it only comes to your notice when the display’s turned off or you’re looking at it at an extreme angle.
What takes the cake is the in-display fingerprint scanner on both displays. It feels strange to think about how long foldable phones had to go before this seemingly pedestrian tech blessed them.
It features dual speakers that can get loud but lack depth. This can be explained by the phone’s slim frame—there’s just not enough air within it to push out. But I wish they were placed in a staggered configuration because while watching movies, it’s really easy to block them.
Vivo X Fold 3 Pro Review: Performance and utility
The X Fold 3 Pro is the first foldable in India to be loaded with 2024-spec hardware. But surprise—it’s Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor. Vivo’s flagships usually come with MediaTek chips, so this choice is a bit unusual.
That said, they did a stellar job of keeping it calm without nerfing it, as the chip tends to run wild (and hot). The storage and RAM are top-of-the-line, and it is evident in benchmarks and real-world usage.
| Processor | Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Mobile Platform |
| RAM&ROM | 16GB+512GB |
| RAM & ROM Type | LPDDR5X
UFS 4.0 |
| Operating System | Funtouch OS 14, Android 14 |
It can handle gaming just fine. While playing Call of Duty: Mobile, the temperatures on the front and back panels never went above 42 degrees Celsius, and the gameplay was mostly stable. However, I couldn’t play for more than 20 minutes in a single sitting, so I can’t comment on whether this is truly a gaming phone. 
Getting down to the software, Funtouch OS is capable of many things, but it still requires some polish. If you look closely at the name of the phone on the box and website, you’ll see a tiny little ‘AI’ moniker after the name of the phone. That’s because the phone has three AI features that help “assistant to the assistant regional managers” do their jobs well.
Here’s what we got:
Note assist: A summarisation feature which turns your notes into pointers.
Voice transcribe and summary: It converts voice notes to text. It only works with English, but works surprisingly well with Indian accents.
AI screen translation: Live translates any content on your screen on any screen using Gemini Ultra.
Except for AI screen translation, AI features require you to log into your Vivo account.
There’s also a cool gesture where you quickly flap the hinge of the foldable display to enter the split-screen mode. All that’s fine, but I took inspiration from the foldable laptops we reviewed earlier this year. I connected the X Fold 3 Pro with a wireless keyboard and mouse and turned it into a laptop replacement. And it’s better than I expected, although it requires a bit of polish.
The display is big enough to accommodate five windows—two in split screen, two in a windowed arrangement, and YouTube in picture-in-picture. It doesn’t gasp for breath or heat up while doing so—the processor is surprisingly well-optimised. You can flick quickly between heavy tasks, such as Photoshop, Lightroom, and Rush. Rush does crash from time to time, but it has a really nice layout similar to the one on PCs and Macs.
I loved it even more because it could open WordPress in desktop mode. I could have multiple windows open to research, write and upload photos. It’s a very similar experience to a Chromebook. The battery life is also very well optimised, even if you mostly work on the internal display.
All it needs is a bit of polish. The Escape key doesn’t work in apps like Slack and WhatsApp. The Alt+Tab gesture does open the multitasking screen, but it doesn’t show any apps, and there’s no option to hide Gboard while typing with a keyboard.
OnePlus distinguished itself from other folds by having that awesome Canvas feature. I wish Vivo could offer a kickstand and a medium-sized keyboard and mouse combination to refine their experience.
Vivo X Fold 3 Pro Review: Cameras
The Vivo X Fold 3 Pro has two 50-megapixel sensors fitted with wide and ultrawide lenses. Additionally, you get a 64-megapixel telephoto. So, you can seamlessly shoot between ultrawide, mid and zoom modes. The 32-megapixel selfie cameras are identical on the cover and foldable displays. Here’s a quick look at the specifications:
| Front Camera | Front 32MP (Cover Screen)
Front 32MP (Main Screen) |
| Rear Camera | 50MP (OIS) VCS + 50MP wide-angle AF + 64MP Telephoto (OIS) 3x Optical Zoom |
| Scene Modes | Snapshot, Night, Portrait, Photo, Video, High Resolution, Pano, Ultra HD Document, Slo-mo, Long Exposure, Time-Lapse, Supermoon, Astro, Landscape & Architecture, Pro, Food, Live Photo, Cinematic Portrait |
Getting down to the brass tacks, Vivo has cunningly not revealed the brand of sensors in any of their documentation. So, I can’t confidently say which sensor is being used here – that’s odd because, in the X100 series, they plastered the Sony-Vivo partnership everywhere. But they are very vocal about the ZEISS optics here.
But that honestly doesn’t mean much because the lenses and computational photography algorithms easily make the camera setup here as good as the X-series.
You get the same clarity, subject awareness, razor-sharp portrait cutouts with natural depth and some of the best night photography experiences in the business. And if you’ve ever used a foldable before, you will often ponder that you shot such awesome shots.
I am not a big fan of selfie cameras in dimly lit scenarios, but I can excuse that because I can use the rear camera to click a selfie, which is twice as good.
The hover mode (Vivo’s analog of the Flex mode in Samsung phones) helps you place the X Fold 3 Pro in a stable position to click photos without using a tripod. I kept it on a risky corner in the mountains to click a photo of the starry night sky—and it worked like a charm!
You also get other niceties from the X-series, such as Cinematic Portrait, Sunset mode, ZEISS Portrait lens kit, and a wide variety of LUTs to edit your photos.
Vivo X Fold 3 Pro Review: Battery and charging
While the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro has impressed me in most regards, it has another ace up its sleeve—a 5,700mAh battery that charges at 100W peak power. Those are easily the best battery and charging figures for any foldable in India, at least on paper.
And it translates very well for everyday use. It’s an all-day phone, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re using the foldable display or not. It could easily last an entire nine-to-six workday without a booster charge even when I used it as a laptop replacement.
And when you charge it, it takes only about 28 minutes to go from one to 100 per cent.
Vivo X Fold 3 Pro Review: Verdict
The Vivo X Fold 3 Pro is a fantastic foldable phone. It looks good, feels good, performs well, charges up quickly, has remarkable battery life, and takes some stunning shots. It can double as a laptop and tablet replacement. Vivo needs to polish its UI to truly make it a laptop replacement.
Addressing the elephant in the room—the Rs 1,59,999 price tag is going to be a tough sell, but Vivo claims that it has built enough rapport with Indian customers to pull off this one. They are also pushing their aftersales X-care support with this phone.
To sweeten the deal, Vivo is dangling the carrot of 10% cashback with select banks, a six-month one-time screen replacement policy and an easy EMI scheme of Rs 6,666 over a span of 24 months with zero downpayment.
However, I also wish Vivo had brought the non-pro variant to a price-sensitive market like India. It, too, is a capable phone, just slightly lower priced.
How does it compare to the competition? Well, it’s the most expensive Android smartphone on sale right now. It’s also the lightest, brightest, and fastest foldable in India, with arguably the best set of cameras. But from a different standpoint, it’s also an exorbitantly expensive phone with open-source software that requires improvement.
Given that it behaves like a normal phone, not like a foldable, the question arises—will somebody buy it over an iPhone 15 Pro Max, the other top dog? Well, the X Fold 3 Pro is the antithesis of it. Think about it. Except for the software (and the lack of an extensive ecosystem), the X Fold 3 Pro is superior in nearly every aspect, on paper and in the real world. In seven years of reviewing phones, no other smartphone has given me such an existential crisis. Maybe that’s the biggest selling point of the X Fold 3 Pro.
